


Thick Skin

by Arsenic, arsenicarcher (Arsenic)



Series: 14 Valentines [20]
Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2020-12-16 04:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21030386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/arsenicarcher
Summary: Written for 14v 2011 theme "domestic violence"





	Thick Skin

Marissa worried, at times, that she’d become inured to the suffering of the women and children she helped settle inside Safe Place’s walls. She had long since learned to look at their bruises without flinching and listen to them cry without joining in. She could even help Doc Jane with the pelvic exams of the little girls who came in and leave the room sad, but intact.

She looked in the mirror sometimes, and underneath the blonde and blue and porcelain that had made her a perfect pawn for so very long, she saw steel. For the first time, she wondered if the strength she’d found was a cold kind—if perhaps it wouldn’t be better for her to still be cracked and crushed if there was at least blood flowing, tears.

*

She knew Butch knew something was wrong. He always did. He’d been uncannily good at that even before they bonded—for that matter, even before his forced transition. He wasn’t pushing, though, which she appreciated. She couldn’t tell if it was because he trusted her to come to him in her own time, or if it was just because he—like the other males she’d known—often treated female emotions as a powder keg best kept far away from any spark. It didn’t matter, since she would come to him if she thought it would help.

On a morning when she came back to the mansion feeling drained but not empty, she went to the kitchens and put together a meal tray before going up to the room. Butch would come when she wasn’t at fourth meal.

Sure enough, he came through the door, eyes wide and alert and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Well, _hellren_.” She smiled a bit. Butch liked it when she spoke in the Old Language. “I just wanted some us time.”

Butch blushed, just a little, on the sides of his neck. She loved that she could still make him do so. They ate breakfast together, and made lazy, easygoing love. When they were done, she rolled atop him and ran her fingers over his chest, trying to figure out where to start. After a few long moments, he ventured, “Everything all right?”

It gave her the motivation she needed to ask, “When you were-- As a police officer, did events that should have bothered you start to seem…mundane?”

“I-- Not _mundane_, I don’t think. More a case of, um, patterns. Violent, wearying patterns.”

Marissa laid her cheek on his chest and allowed herself to get caught up in the rhythm of his blood for a few moments. She admitted, “I think I’m losing my compassion.”

“Why? Have you started to think the women at your place deserved what happened to them?”

She thought of the female she’d admitted last—not even in her thirties, traded by her father to her husband, both with tendencies that left marks. “Scribe Virgin, no. Of course not.”

“Then why are you worried?”

Marissa went over the question in her head. “Perhaps it is just my passion that I’m losing.”

“Or maybe you’ve set aside pity and overinvestment for pragmatic goals and level-headedness.”

She levered herself up so that she could look at him. Words weren’t normally his strong suit. He sighed and sat up, pulling her into him so that they were cuddling. He said, “On the force, it was—we would wait until the new recruits grew out of the phase where everything was intense, because that phase gets people killed.”

“What I do isn’t the same.”

He shrugged. “Not so different. You help people who need help.”

She allowed him the vast oversimplification, because she took his point. “You think I’m better this way.”

“I love you anyway you are. But I think a clear head counts for a lot.”

*

When she got into Safe Place the next evening, the newest inhabitant, Brea, was curled up alone in the classroom where they taught basic life skills such as cooking for those females who had always had _doggen_, reading and writing for those who had purposefully been kept from literacy, and occasionally something vocational in bent.

The classroom was dark and the heat had not yet kicked on. Marissa turned the light on and said, “Forgive me if I am intruding.”

Brea’s eyes were tired, weary, as though she’d not slept. “I was just leaving.”

“Stay for a moment and talk.”

“Of what? This place is for females like me, is it not? I am sure you have heard my story many times from different lips.”

Marissa smiled slightly. “But the lips were different.”

Brea’s eyes were sharp, her expression one of disbelief. “As though it matters.”

Marissa realized, in that moment, that it was okay for her not to be quivering in fear of what Brea would say, not to be overwhelmed ahead of time by what her story might hold. It was okay, so long as she believed herself when she said, “It matters.”


End file.
